Advantages

Disadvantages

This is a very good and gentle audio book for children

THE STORIES

This audio CD features 8 stories by Hans Christian Andersen. The stories include The Little Match Girl, The Ugly Duckling, The Little Mermaid, The Emperors New Clothes, The Princess and the Pea and Thumbelina. They are readings of the story using just one female narrator who puts voices on for different characters and this is nice because it sounds more like a story than a play.

THE CDs

These stories are on 3 CDs with a running time of 3 1/2 hours. The cover of the CD case shows an illustration as it would look in a Hans Christian Andersen book and it is very quaint. Each CD is decorated with a scene from one of the stories featured on that CD.

THE NARRATOR

I think this narrator is very good for classic children's tales like these. She has got a happy voice that shows emotion as she's telling the story. She does not go over the top with character voices and you can always tell it's her but she is very good at creating memorable voices so that you know who's talking all of the time. She has got the sort of voice that children like because it is soft but there is plenty of inflection and changes of tone.

WHAT I THINK

I was gifted this set of story CDs when I gave birth to my oldest daughter and now they are older my children listen to it regularly. I do not allow them a television in their bedrooms so they have developed a love for story CDs, this is not a favourite but it is played a lot.

The stories are very good and even though they have been abridged there is not very much missing from them. The tales flow smooth and the narrator has got an interesting voice that makes children want to listen, my daughters favourite is The Ugly Duckling so I like that the stories are uploaded singly onto the CDs so you can skip through them like tracks on a music CD.

I take this with us if we are going on a long car journey because it is better for the children to listen to than the radio. It is also soothing for my seven month old daughter when she is strapped into her car seat while we are travelling. My other daughters like hearing the moral to the story and I like the way the narrator emphasises these but she doesn't ever sound like she is preaching at the people who are listening.